Thursday, 20 October 2016

THE government has appointed top intelligence operative, Gift
Machengete as director-general of the Postal and Telecommunications
Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz), a move seen as the authority
moving to tighten its noose around social media over alleged abuse by
opposition activists ahead of the 2018 elections.Prior to his appointment, Machengete was director of finance and administration in the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO).The Potraz board confirmed Machengete’s appointment yesterday.“Potraz would like to announce the appointment of Gift Kallisto
Machengete as the director-general.

Machengete has over 32 years’
experience in leadership and management, most of which were spent in
government as an economist, a senior diplomat in China and Malaysia,
part-time lecturer at Bindura University and as director of finance and
administration for the President’s department,” a public notice by the
communications regulatory authority said yesterday.

His elevation could be part of President Robert Mugabe’s ploy to
consolidate government control of social media and snoop into people’s
private telecommunication messages.

At the height of the anti-government protests in July, Potraz
threatened to clamp down heavily on people found using social media to
communicate alleged “abusive, threatening, subversive or offensive
telecommunication messages”.Zimbabwe is currently in the process of crafting a Cyber Bill to
regulate online communication. However, there have been reports that
government plagiarised parts of the proposed law from Lesotho.Analysts have argued the draft Bill, which aims “to criminalise
offences against computers and network-related crime”, is at best clumsy
and murky given it fails to provide clear answers as to its real
intentions.While both Lesotho and Zimbabwe produced draft Cybercrime Bills in
2013, Lesotho’s version contains repressive additions, which have been
sneaked into the Zimbabwean draft. Critics point out that an obvious flaw in the draft and model law is
that “there is blatant intrusion on the privacy of citizens by
authorising interception of data communication without sufficient
oversight and checks and balances to prevent abuse which is, of course,
contrary to the Constitution”. Newsday